At the same time, Portuguese ships were now using Pernambuco openly. Cochrane made no attempt to interfere with them. The "Portuguese faction" now enjoyed a majority of nine to four in the Tribunal of Prizes, and had decreed that so far from rewarding any interference with Portuguese shipping, they would make the appellant liable for damages. Ignoring the Portuguese, Cochrane began to negotiate with Manoel de Carvalho, the "President" of the new regime. He pointed out that division and anarchy in Brazil would destroy independence, and offered to mediate between the rebels and the Emperor. Carvalho replied by inviting Cochrane to change sides and join the republican cause. Cochrane refused, remarking that "it did not follow that, because the Brazilian ministers were unjust and hostile to me, I should accept a bribe from a traitor to follow his example".
When the rebel leaders refused his offer of safe conduct following surrender, Cochrane warned them that he must first blockade and then bombard their city. There were already rumours of clippers having been ordered by Carvalho from the United States, and steamships from England, so there was little time to be lost. Fortunately for the inhabitants, the waters off Pernambuco were too shallow for any ship other than the schooner Leopoldina to carry out the bombardment. A mortar was duly put on board her and fired. After several shells had been sent on their way it was evident that the explosions shook the schooner so badly that she was likely to go to the bottom before doing much damage to Pernambuco. Cochrane called off the attack. But the effect of the large shells exploding among them evidently turned the citizens against the rebel regime. At least, the force of 1200 loyal troops advancing from their disembarkation point farther down the coast took the city with little difficulty. Carvalho himself, after a last defence in one of the suburbs, escaped on board a fishing raft and was rescued by a British corvette, H.M.S. Tweed.11
It was 9 November when Cochrane and his squadron arrived at Maranham. The situation represented anarchy rather than any political rebellion. Miguel Bruce, the President, aided by an army of negro troops, was fighting the former military leaders. Cochrane quickly saw that "Bruce was unfit to be trusted with authority at all" but Bruce's opponents were fighting one another as well as their President. There were, said Cochrane, "two or three family parties fighting each other under the Imperial flag". According to the protests of the French and British consuls, it was Bruce's negro army, officered by newly emancipated slaves, who were responsible for most of the murder and brutality. Cochrane rounded them up and confined them on hulks in the harbour, under the guns of his fleet. He carried out a purge of the more notoriously corrupt officials and celebrated Christmas Day by deposing Bruce himself and replacing him by Manuel Lobo. Cochrane insisted that he had merely "suspended" Bruce, but the practical effect was to stir up a rebellion among those who believed their President had been overthrown.
For six months, anchored almost on the equator, Cochrane struggled with the petty but bloody politics of Maranham. He reported the situation to the government in Rio de Janeiro but received little acknowledgement. He argued the issue of prize money and pay with Brazilian authorities, both national and provincial. He got nowhere with it. Despite his loyalty to the Emperor, the empire at large had forgotten him. As though this were not enough, the pestilential climate had undermined his own health, as well as that of his officers and men. Having had his fill of Maranham and its intrigues, Cochrane left one ship to guard the port, sent the Pedro Primiero to Rio de Janeiro, and shifted his flag into the Piranga. On 1 January 1825, he had written privately to the Emperor, asking for leave to resign his command. "I have now accomplished all that can be expected from me," he concluded wearily. But his request had not been acknowledged. With his crew of mercenaries he sailed northward and eastward, in search of cooler waters. The frigate put to sea on 18 May and crossed the equator three days later. The winds carried them eastward, with little complaint on the part of the men. By 11 June they were off the Azores, which by any stretch of the imagination was an odd location for a Brazilian warship.
Cochrane claimed that he intended to sail from the Azores to Rio de Janeiro once his men had recuperated from their equatorial experiences. But strong gales caught the Piranga, her maintopmast was sprung, the main and maintopsail yards were unserviceable. The rigging was rotten and the provisions stank. On 25 June, the Piranga anchored in Spithead.18
For much of the remainder of his life, Cochrane was to be involved in financial quarrels with the Brazilian government, the question depending upon whether he had deserted the cause by bringing the Piranga to England. In his own view, he had had no choice in the matter. The frigate was not in any state to cross the Atlantic again, nor was she provisioned for such a voyage. To have put into a Portuguese port was out of the question and, under the circumstances, Spithead seemed a reasonable landfall. Cochrane protested that he was the one who had most to lose from it, since the Tory government had by now passed the Foreign Enlistment Act to make his activities on behalf of other governments a criminal offence. At the same time, it is not hard to see why the Brazilians were dismayed to discover that their flagship had left Maranham and was now riding at anchor off Portsmouth.
If Cochrane's career as a Latin American admiral was effectively at an end, he none the less returned from his six and a half years' exile with his reputation further enhanced among European liberals. Despite the petty quarrels of the day, the Brazilians themselves were destined to christen him "the South American Lafayette". Most important of all, at fifty years old he was still possessed of the enthusiasm and energy with which he had been accustomed to fight other men's battles as well as his own. He was, in every sense, an imposing figure, a certain middle-aged stoutness filling out his considerable height.
In the capture of Valdivia, the cutting out of the Esmeralda, and the winning of the northern provinces for the new Brazilian empire, Cochrane's admirers detected the same audacity and resolution which had made the Gamo and Fort Trinidad legends of the Napoleonic wars. Now he was no longer a lone crusader against the complacency and nepotism of British political life generally and of the Admiralty in particular. He had emerged on the world stage as the champion in arms of liberty and national independence, the warrior of a new century and a new political philosophy. The enemies who had snared him secretly a decade earlier would now be obliged to fight him openly, where the world could judge them, and this they seemed disinclined to do. The Royal Navy prudently fired a salute as the Piranga sailed into Spithead. When Cochrane went ashore, he was cheered and applauded by the Portsmouth crowds, as soon as they realised the identity of the stout naval gentleman. In the House of Commons, his ministerial enemies and their successors heard with deep apprehension the first demands that the injustice done him should be brought to light.
I will ask, what native of this country can help wishing that such a man were again amongst us? I hope I shall be excused for saying thus much; but I cannot avoid fervently wishing that such advice may be given to the Crown by his Majesty's constitutional advisers as will induce his Majesty graciously to restore Lord Cochrane to the country which he so warmly loves, and to that noble service to the glory of which, I am convinced he willingly would sacrifice every earthly consideration.19
The appeal of Sir James Mackintosh fell on unsympathetic ears. Lord Ellenborough was now dead, so for that matter was St Vincent, while Gambier was seventy years old and in decline. But George IV, who as Prince Regent had ordered Cochrane's "degradation" was still on the throne, and Lord Liverpool was still his Prime Minister. John Wilson Croker remained ensconced at the Admiralty until 1830, while the Duke of Wellington sat in the cabinet as Master-General of the Ordnance. Not only was he an opponent of Cochrane's principles, he had fought hard against recognising the new South American republics.
But the popular feeling for Cochrane was shown repeatedly and sometimes effusively, as when he and Kitty went to the theatre in Edinburgh on the evening of 3 October. Sir Walter Scott, who was also present, described how a reference to South America was inc
luded in the performance, whereupon the entire audience rose and turned to the couple with spontaneous and prolonged applause. Kitty, who had endured the perils of the Andes with comparative equanimity, was overcome by the occasion and at length burst into tears. But Scott commemorated the enthusiasm of the audience in a poem which he addressed to her, and in part of which he described the ovation.
Even now, as through the air the plaudits rung,
I marked the smiles that in her features came;
She caught the word that fell from every tongue,
And her eye brightened at her Cochrane's name;
And brighter yet became her bright eyes' blaze;
It was his country, and she felt the praise.20
In Scotland, Cochrane stood as a hero in his own right, but Kitty, by virtue of her striking beauty, contributed a further dimension to the heroic quality. She was, as Scott remarked, easily recognisable, as distinctive in appearance as the tall figure of her husband.
I knew thee, lady, by that glorious eye,
By that pure brow and those dark locks of thine.21
Beyond the enlightened and literate middle class, who saw in Cochrane the hero of Byronic campaigns and of revolutionary romance, his appeal to ordinary men and women was much simpler. With few exceptions, the victorious leaders of the country in the Napoleonic struggle had become the instruments of authoritarian government in the years of peace. The heroes of Waterloo were soon the villains of Peterloo. But the reformers saw clearly that they were oppressed by the same men as Cochrane and that the freedoms for which he had fought were those they coveted. Among his former colleagues, it was Sir Francis Burdett who publicly pronounced Cochrane the future "Liberator of Greece".22
The title was something of an embarrassment so long as he was, at least nominally, First Admiral of Brazil, and so long as there were no weapons available to him for doing battle on behalf of Greek freedom. For the time being, during the remainder of 1825 and the early months of 1826, Cochrane was involved in a protracted quarrel with the Brazilian envoy in London over the Piranga and his conduct in command of her. The upshot was that he was suspended from the office of First Admiral, later dismissed, and later still reinstated, at least so far as his pension was concerned. There was no absolute inconsistency between his bringing the Piranga to England for repairs and his intention to continue in Brazilian service. But there was virtually nothing left for him to do in Brazil, except haggle over prize money owing to him and damages for which he was liable in seizing vessels improperly. While he insisted that he had given no cause for dismissal, it would have taken an act of extreme credulity to suppose that he intended to return to Brazil at this stage. Having been dismissed from Brazilian service, on the grounds that he had abandoned his post, Cochrane speedily drew a bill on the imperial government for his pay up to the date of dismissal. On 10 February 1826 the bill was drawn and refused. With that, the South American adventure was at an end.
The immediate cause of annoyance to the Brazilian government was the rumour that shortly after arriving in England with the Piranga, Cochrane had accepted command of the Greek navy in the war of independence against Turkey. On 21 August 1825, while the Piranga was still at Portsmouth, Cochrane received a letter from the Chevalier Gameiro, Brazilian envoy in London, demanding to know whether newspaper reports that he had accepted such an offer were true. Cochrane replied deftly that he had been approached by the Greek Committee in London but that it would be impossible for him to accept the invitation while in the service of Brazil. It was in no way improper for him to be approached, and he reminded Gameiro that the Brazilians had offered him a command while he was still in the service of Chile. He had neither accepted nor rejected the Greek proposal. Gameiro suspected, with every justification, that Cochrane was about to leave Brazilian service. While they exchanged letters, a formal invitation was on its way to Cochrane from Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos, secretary to the Greek National Assembly. With the authority of the rebel government, he asked Cochrane to take command of the navy in the war against the Turks.
Despite his evasive reply to Gameiro, Cochrane had virtually accepted the invitation of the Greek Committee in London as early as 16 August. While explaining that he was still in the service of Brazil, he agreed in general terms to accept the command as soon as he was free. It was evident that such freedom would not be long delayed. He was urged to consent by the leaders of the Committee, including Burdett, John Cam Hobhouse, the friend of Byron; Joseph Hume, the Scots radical leader; Edward Ellice, and John Bowring.
The enthusiasm for Greek freedom owed much to England's cultural and educational allegiance to Athenian democracy, but particularly to the idealism expressed in the poetry of Shelley and the example of Byron. In 1822, Shelley had published Hellas, dedicated to Mavrocordatos himself and portraying Greek women as slaves of the Turks. Byron, having died of fever at Missolonghi before he could take part in its defence against the Turks, had none the less served the cause of revolution by raising the first Greek loan of £300,000 in London, early in 1824. In the famous "Isles of Greece" verses in the third canto of Don Juan he had also provided English Philhellenes with a battle hymn more memorable than the windy neo-classicism of Shelley's drama.
The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea:
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream'd that Greece might still be free;
For, standing on the Persian's grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.
With an arguable lack of scruple, Cochrane transferred his allegiance from the Brazilian empire to the Greek rebellion. He had sufficient experience of new regimes to anticipate that the lyric purity of revolutionary hopes would not be reflected in practice. But while he finally extricated himself from his command of the Piranga and the rest of the Emperor's fleet, he turned his attention to the strategy and equipment which would be needed to bring victory to Greece.
Until 1821 there had been no generally organised attempt by the Greeks to free themselves from Turkish occupation. But if they looked to Russia or even to England for their freedom, they were deluding themselves, in Shelley's view.
Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other until one or both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in establishing the independence of Greece, and in maintaining it both against Russia and the Turk; - but when was the oppressor generous or just ?23
Writing in November 1821, Shelley had seen only the earliest developments in the Greek struggle and, indeed, in British policy with the advent of Canning as Foreign Secretary. He sensed the nervousness of European governments at the prospect of the Greek rebellion spreading a new revolutionary contagion, endangering "those ringleaders of the privileged gangs of murderers, called Sovereigns". Certainly, Russia disowned her protege, Prince Alexander Hypsilantes, who led the initial uprising in March 1821.
The rebels fared badly in the northern mainland provinces but gained control of the Peloponnese. Both sides fought with bloody determination and vindictive fury. At Tripolitza, the Greeks slaughtered 8000 Turks; men, women and children. The Turks replied by the more famous massacre of Chios in April 1822. Some 25,000 of the island's inhabitants were put to death, apart from the numerous women who were taken as slaves. The incident was grandly commemorated in Delacroix's famous canvas of 1824 and stirred the indignation of European liberals still further.
In 1823 and 1824, the revolution degenerated into an obscure struggle. The independence of Greece had been proclaimed at the beginning of 1822, though large areas had been left to the Turks and, in any case, there was civil war between the contending Greek leaders.
During this period, however, the Greek navy, led by Miaoulis, had done much to prevent the Turkish ships from ravaging the islands and coastal towns. Sultan Mahmoud, carefully preparing his counterattack, had ca
lled on the aid of Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt. The Arab army, led by Ibrahim Pasha, invaded the Peloponnese. One after another, the Greek strongholds fell. By the time that Mavrocordatos made his appeal to Cochrane, the rebellion was in danger of collapsing. Many of the islands remained loyal to the cause but on the mainland Missolonghi, in the west, was besieged by Ibrahim's army and Athens, in the east, was under threat.
The main hope for Greek independence seemed to he with its sympathisers in Europe as a whole. As Cochrane accepted the command of the navy, Sir Richard Church was approached to lead the army. As a British army captain he had seen considerable Mediterranean service during the Napoleonic wars and then entered the Neapolitan army. More important still, the growth of Philhellenism throughout Europe and the United States was reflected in the enlightened policy of Canning as Foreign Secretary. In place of mere suspicion of revolution, he had instigated a policy guaranteeing an agreed recognition of the right of Greece to independence on the part of England, France, and Russia. His object was to restore peace between the Greeks and Turks without involving England in war or allowing Russia to intervene militarily. To this end, he had despatched his cousin, Stratford Canning, as British ambassador in Constantinople, with instructions to undertake negotiations.
Cochrane's first concern was to equip a fleet which would win a decisive victory over the Turks and their Egyptian allies, cutting off Ibrahim's supply route to Alexandria. In 1825, a second Greek loan of £200,000 had been raised in London, of which £150,000 had been set aside for new warships. Cochrane decided on six steamships to be built in England and two frigates to be built in the United States. Though it would have been more convenient to have all the ships built in Europe, the pattern of American "heavy" frigates with sixty guns each, as opposed to thirty-two or forty-four in Europe, would give him an invaluable advantage over the Turks. Moreover, his experiences in Chile and Brazil convinced him that all these ships must be manned by English or American crews. Despite Admiral Miaoulis's efforts, it was evident that Greek seamen were quite undisciplined in battle. Nor could he rely on much support ashore. "With respect to the Greek army," General Ponsonby advised
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